


Tell Me Lies

by swordmemorykey



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, This Is Sad, a few times throughout, be aware, bucky is Sad and Gay, fairy is also used, like very sad, the f slur is used because this is around the 1930s-40s, this goes up till the end of the train scene from the first movie so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 10:14:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12909813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swordmemorykey/pseuds/swordmemorykey
Summary: James Buchanan Barnes is not gay. He can't be. He can't let himself be.(a fic about Bucky denying his feelings till the very end)





	Tell Me Lies

Bucky was horrified as he followed a man- Michael, he said his name was- into a bar that should have been illegal had anyone known about it. The man told him this was a place he could be himself and that was part of the horror. How did the man know about Bucky’s...impure thoughts toward other blokes? Why was he helping encourage those thoughts? Too dumbfounded to be angry, he had followed the man. Just to see, he told himself while his heart strummed a different tune. 

Michael introduced him to virtually everybody in the bar before leaving him to do...other things. With men. It was obscene what the men and women in the bar were doing. It wasn’t right, Bucky knew it wasn’t right. Was told it wasn’t every day of his life by others and himself. It repeated like a mantra in his brain. It repeated even as he sat and chatted with a nice man by the name of John. It repeated as he left the bar with the man. It repeated all the way up to this man's apartment and then continued repeating as Bucky was grabbed and pulled flush to him. ‘This isn’t right, this isn’t right. I’m not right, this isn’t right.’ Well if it’s so wrong why did it make him feel this way? The way most men talked about feeling with women.

In the morning, Bucky left the man's apartment faster than he entered it. He couldn’t believe he’d just done that. With a man. He felt ashamed. And yet, a part of him felt...elated? He clamped down on those feelings before they had a chance to reach the light of day. What he did was wrong, what he continued to do almost every night after was wrong and he felt dirty and ashamed but so so good at the same time. 

\------

“You stay away from that part of town, you hear me James? Don’t want them turning you into a faggot. No son of mine is gonna be corrupted into a pansy, no sir.” 

Bucky forced a smile and reassured his mom that, “yes ma’am, I’ll stay away from the fairies.”

“Don’t want you catching whatever those fags have. They must be sick in the head to do what they do. It’s deplorable.”

Bucky listened has his mother droned on and on about how horrible homosexuals were. He nodded when appropriate and assured his mother again and again that he would never think to step foot in that part of town. Because he wasn’t a faggot. He couldn’t be one.

\------

Every dame he takes out, brings back home, spends the night with. Each kiss, he imagines it’s the lips of one of the boys he took weeks prior. He hates it, hates how the girl in his arms does nothing for him. Hates how imagining she is a man makes him immediately more interested in her. Hates that he continues the pattern of imagining with each new girl he brings. Wishes he could stop but he can’t because it works and if he just keeps doing it, nobody will suspect a thing. Because there’s nothing to suspect. Because he’s not a fairy. But god, he can’t get those men out of his head. He thinks about their skin, their bodies, the way they said his name- whispered, like a secret shared only between the two of them. 

He thinks about going back. Being with them. It would be so easy.

He goes to a bar instead, some hole in the wall establishment filled with girls the other men in the joint itch to get their paws on. He goes, has a few drinks, gets a girl, brings her back to his apartment. He’s lost track of how many times he’s done this. It’s almost mechanical at this point. He does everything he’s learned they love. ‘Maybe if they enjoy it, I’ll learn to, too.’ He thinks to himself. ‘I just need the right girl.’ 

No girl is the right girl. No girl fills the space in his heart that they should. No girl leaves him breathless, weak at the knees, excited. He keeps trying.

He never does go back to that bar, never meets his past lovers. It’s for the best, he tells himself every night as he takes another girl. ‘Then why do I feel so lonely?’

\------

By the time he gets his orders, he’s learned how to ignore those feelings of lust. That’s all they are- lust. Nothing more. He’s learned how to talk to the other men about brods, learned how to make the women he forces himself to be with feel good, learned to pretend to like them all. He got so good at pretending that he started to think ‘maybe I’m normal after all. I just had to get over those lapses in judgement.’ He entered the army James Buchanan Barnes and was quickly known for plowing through women as fast as they threw themselves on him.

None left him satisfied but it was better than the alternative.

\------

In his imprisonment he had time to think. He thought about all the women he had been with, the men. It made him sick that even the mere thought of the men made him stir uncomfortably in his chains. That even now, chained and left for dead, he was having those thoughts. ‘Maybe this is what I deserve. Maybe this is what I deserved the whole time.’

This was the end, Bucky knew it. In his last moments, he finally gave in to the thoughts he was trying to suppress. He thought about all the men, cursed the name of every woman he had ever had the displeasure of taking. Thought of how the men felt, how they made him feel. Let himself imagine for one last time the bliss he felt taking them in, letting them fill him eith their pleasure.

His last thought before the scientist put him under was, ‘I’m sorry, ma.’

\------

The universe was mocking him. Why keep someone like him alive when countless others gave their lives? They had children and brods back home. They had dreams of life outside of war. And the universe decided to spare Bucky? A heathen? A dirty fag? This isn’t what he deserved. He didn’t deserve to live while more deserving men didn’t. 

He pretended to be happy. He joined Steve (“holy shit, punk. How long was I gone?”) and the rest of the Howling Commandos in their mission against Hydra. When he went to the bar with them, he didn’t bother pretending to be interested in any of the girls. He knew these would be his last few days, it was best to give in to his sickest desires. He went and slept alone that night. It was one of the best night's sleep he’d had in as long as he could remember.

\------

His last thought as he falls off the train was, “This is what I deserve.”

**Author's Note:**

> i realized there weren't any fics about bucky denying his gay feelings in a time when it was illegal and having to deal with internalized homophobia and outside influences. so i wrote one. you're welcome.


End file.
